123 P. 228 | Cal. Ct. App. | 1912
Appeal from an order issuing a peremptory writ of mandate commanding defendant, as auditor of Imperial county, to issue to plaintiff his warrant upon the county treasurer for the sum of $70.16, claimed to be due petitioner as salary for the month of May, 1911, as deputy sheriff of said county, to which office he had been appointed on May 3, 1911, by Mobley Meadows, sheriff of Imperial county.
When Meadows was elected sheriff, on November 8, 1910, Imperial county was in the thirty-sixth-one-half class. (Pol. Code, sec. 4265a.) The compensation fixed by law for the sheriffs of such counties was the sum of $5,000 and all mileage now allowed by law. (Pol. Code, sees. 4265a, 4300b.) By act approved February 28, 1911, [Stats. 1911, p. 96], the several counties of the state were reclassified according to population for the purpose of regulating the compensation of officers. As so classified Imperial county was declared to be a county of the thirty-sixth class, and by an act of the legislature, approved May 1, 1911, the compensation of the sheriff in the counties of such class was fixed at $5,000 per annum, and all commissions, fees and mileage for the service of papers and process issued without his county; in addition to which, it was provided that he should have an under-sheriff at a salary of $1,500 per annum, and a court deputy at a salary of $900 per annum, both of whom should be appointed by the sheriff and the salaries of whom were made a charge upon the county treasury.
Respondent concedes that if upon a comparison of the two acts it appears that the change in compensation effects an increase thereof, then to apply it to an incumbent would be obnoxious to section 9, article XI, of the constitution. If no change other than the allowance of deputies had been made, such fact, under the decision in Dougherty v. Austin,
The facts of the case at bar are almost identical with those involved in that of Smith v. Mathews,
The order granting the peremptory writ is reversed, with instructions to the court to make an order denying petitioner's application.
Allen, P. J., and James, J., concurred.